


Anabasis

by hikachu



Category: Saint Seiya
Genre: Gen, Pre-Series, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-19
Updated: 2015-06-22
Packaged: 2018-03-13 19:30:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3393554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hikachu/pseuds/hikachu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Childhood and adolescence of the Gold Saints. Or, fragmented chronicles of Gemini Saga's fall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue (Shion)

**Author's Note:**

> English translation of my ongoing fanfic, [Anabasi](http://www.efpfanfic.net/viewstory.php?sid=1299402), started in 2012, originally written in Italian. Many thanks to my talented husbando [diopan](http://archiveofourown.org/users/diopan/pseuds/diopan), for kindly proofreading every chapter and making this readable!

On a certain summer night, more than two centuries of gazing up at a blank canvas later, the sky finally catches on fire and Shion's eyes grow wide.  
  
“At last, the stars are descending upon us again.”  
  
He's alone on the sacred hill, and yet a wordless reply, a warm sign of approval, reaches him across countless miles: lands, mountains, rivers and lakes, and people, all describing a single path, a single red thread that binds Shion to his youth andthe other side of the world.  
  
Shion's heart is heavy with duty and anguish. Still, it beats fast against his ribcage and up his throat, painful and hopeful like first love.


	2. Floating away in every direction (Saga)

“Even Father Zeus cannot escape fate,” is one of the first lessons the Pope himself taught them. “Tragedy is born, in fact, from nothing other than an excess of the self. From the hubris which pits us against destiny.”

Aiolos and Saga are confused and raise their head as if to seek out an explanation on the Pope's mask. They are very young, and very small, still they remember at once the warning they received as they were led before the massive doors of the vast audience hall: on your knees and keep your eyes down, unless the Pope orders you otherwise. Aiolos and Saga are too young, and too small, to understand all of it, to truly understand it, but they feel that giving into their instincts put them at fault, that there is a link to what the ancient man seated on the throne is trying to teach them.

They start, blush, and then, wearing the earnest, almost stoic, faces of the wise and invincible warriors they shall one day be, they lower their heads again. Behind the mask, unseen, Shion smiles softly.

“Nevertheless,” he resumes, “fate is no constriction. To follow it means to live well.” Which is the truth, but right now, Shion cares perhaps more about reassuring those children a little, than he does discussing transcendental truths. This could very well be the first and last time someone offers them a helping hand in the long journey that awaits them: these children carry the very starts that guide them within themselves and there will be no rest for them, for the Saints' history is one that begins with Time, when people used to be one of the many perfect ideas in a world beyond the sky and nothing more than that. It begins way before their birth, and that of their mothers and fathers and their ancestors', before Athens and before Achilles and before Uruk, on the other shore of Mare Nostrum, and earlier than writing, Theuth's gift-curse itself; it begins with the world's first breath, and it escapes their grasp already at their first cry: constellations turn to flesh, in them, but they shall dictate the Saints' every breath as well. They will decide in what season and what place and under what skies they'll breathe their last.

“But, sir…” Saga stumbles on words he can't find, in a manner that will soon become irreconcilable with the image of the perfect, god-like Saint he's going to be. He lifts his head again and in his eyes one can read that it's not another faux pas, that he's aware he shouldn't, but also that this is not out of pride or defiance: there is dignity in his expression, in his straight back and most of all in his faith – in Athena and his task – which allows him to voice his doubts while staring into the mask's expressionless eyes, unwavering.

“Sir,” he tries again. “Is it not our duty as Saints, to make it so that the history of men will know as little conflict as possible? Even when conflicts seem inevitable.”

Aiolos watches Saga out of the corner of his eye and, although he does not smile, his face lights up with a mixture of admiration and silent delight. They haven't known each other for a particularly long time, but there's a mutual admiration, a mutual observation, the consciousness of being together, in the same place at the same time, which binds them to each other tightly and indissolubly, between innocent rivalry and a friendship that has not bloomed yet and already transcends itself.

In them, Shion sees fragments of a life that once belonged to him and another who, more than anyone else, could understand him, and his smile grows a little bit softer and a little bit sadder.

Shion watches Saga and wonders if this child could possibly hold the double nature of the prince that leads others and of the Saint that protects them.

Then he tells him: “You see, young Saga, to fight for the sake of Athena and mankind, no matter what, is in itself part of your destiny. Should you succeed, as we hope, and become worthy of the Sacred Cloth, yet chose not to fulfill your duties, you shall receive infamy for it; death and despair, the people. Should you decide to use your power for an end that is not the foreordained one, only chaos would ensue, and fate would wash away that mistake with blood, making it into a warning for those who shall come after. You see, children,” Shion goes on, turning his palms towards the tall ceiling, “you are young and your limbs mighty, therefore it is within your capabilities to swim all the way to an island you can glimpse on the horizon. However, in spite of your youth, in spite of your strength, in spite of your skills, should you decide to stop living as men to live the way fish do… Do you understand what I'm trying to say?”

They do, they both do. They bow their heads with determination and, in their eyes, there are mysteries unfurling which they do not know of yet.

Shion sighs and thinks, for now, what magnificent Saints these children will become.

“This,” he says at last, “is what it means to follow one's fate in order to live well.”

 

* * *

 

Summer is in full swing and the Athenian sun bakes the pebbles and the dirt, the arena and the pathways, Aiolos' skin and Saga's as they climb their way down among the deserted Twelve Temples.

Marble, rocks and bricks are by now the same dust, indistinguishable from each other; ground under the soles of soldiers, servants and Saints, across the millennia. It's a dangerous path for those who are unused to it: mind your neck, they'd been warned the first time around.

Both look straight ahead and the silence feels natural, somehow intimate, between them. The only children in this place where time stopped among ruins that the living keep on wresting from the hands of ghosts, in the name of Athena. Loneliness and bewilderment were, after all, their first bond and the first spark between uncertain eyes on a morning of almost four years ago, under this very sun, on the very steps Saga is descending today, side by side with Aiolos.

From time to time their elbows bounce after bumping against each other, and for some reason Saga is reminded of the hand Aiolos had held out for him on that day. It was still soft then, and tan, though not as dark as now.

Aiolos didn't know then, as he doesn't know now, that even in a phantom acropolis, Saga has never shared his loneliness; he doesn't know that Saga is half of a whole, that someone lives hiding between his shadow and that of the Gemini House.

It's a thought that casts a shadow upon Saga's face, who's not aware that the first time he'll curse his own stars – and himself, for entrusting his fate to them as Shion wished – will be because they did not make Kanon and him come into the world as one. At only seven years old, Saga doesn't know that too much love for justice, and for the goddess, will bring him to commit the most unforgivable sins. He doesn't know that because he loved him, and himself, too much, Kanon will awaken a demon and become one himself.

At this moment in time, Saga is just a child who has decided, along with his first friend, to follow a fate which will betray them later on.

 

* * *

 

“There is a sea in your eyes,” Aiolos will tell Saga, several months after that audience, as they watch the Aegean sea, perched on a reef.

“There is a sea in your eyes.”

Aiolos is righteous and it's already clear, from the way he carries himself, that he's going to be a splendid warrior; he'll be the best, the model, but he will never be a poet nor a flatterer.

At the age of eight years and one spring, his words will be mere observation. Saga, not reading it as a compliment either, will blink and say: “Not really,” and notice, then, that there's nothing more he can say: it's Kanon's eyes that hold the sea, the sea that roared and swallowed the villagers' fishing boats, but Aiolos doesn't know about Kanon, Saga's first secret and untold truth.

If Aiolos did, perhaps he could see that Saga's eyes hold the sky instead.

A starless, night sky.


	3. A legacy of solitude (Kanon)

The fig feels still fresh between his hands. It's soft and smooth like Saga's cheek when, in bed, they press their faces together and surrender themselves to their shared warmth before they do to sleep.  
  
The fig is frail however: it would be enough to throw it against a wall with barely any strength or - really - to let it fall for it to become pulp. White, red and tender like the brains of their father, who slipped on the reeves while untangling some fishing net.  
  
What a dumb way to die, is all Kanon can make of it. Neither a storm, nor pirates, nor some hungry beast at sea: nothing more than to die while doing what you've been doing all your life. To die out of sheer stupidity.  
  
He was young - younger still than he is now - when it happened and he really can't bring himself to shed tears for a man whose name is the only thing he can recall and only because his widow has never stopped calling it across the years, as if ghosts could leave drachmas on the table for her or fill the stomach of her children. All Kanon recalls are a name and a smashed skull: click, the image like a picture that won't fade from his mind and won't leave space for anything else.  
  
Eventually, the fig slips from his hands: splat. It's a mess on the floor and, as expected, Kanon sees his father in it, sees him like he'll never be able to see him in another human being.  
  
Saga, he thinks with pride, shares that childish smoothness alone with this fig and only for now. Saga, like Kanon, isn't dumb or frail like a fisherman that slips on viscid reeves on a beautiful August day. They are stars made flesh who can make other stars tremble and turn them into dust with their fists; they can make the earth shake and cut the sky in half. This is what they had been told, upon reaching Athens, and from the very first moment, Kanon felt it was true.  
  
But on that same day they also learned: there is only one Cloth for the Third Temple's sole keeper. The twins stewed over those worlds as the sun cooked the red dirt in the arena and their shoulders.  
  
“Even so, the stars have chosen a soul dwelling in two bodies for this era—an occurrence that is far from rare, for the constellation of Gemini,” was the last thing Kanon heard before the instructor's voice became a distant droning, dissolving into the wind that came from the sea and the sound of the waves. Afterwards, Kanon remembers the scent of salt, barely discernible from the Acropolis hill, and the pungent one that emanated from Saga's sun burnt skin o perhaps his own—he couldn't tell, not when they had been so close, sides and ribcages pressed together, holding hands in secret.  
  
They have never been rivals before, if not to establish who could finish lunch faster to go out and play, or who could climb on the highest branch of the ancient oak just outside the decrepit walls of the village. Kanon understands that this should not be a competition because a woman can only bring into the world one creature a time and even with twins there's the one that comes out first and the one that follows—that as long as Saga remains as strong as he is, at least, and _alive_ , the sacred Cloth will be implicitly his as well. Kanon understands that there is no place for conflict, here, that isn't the conflict within his heart.  
  
Kanon understands well, now, that he became _the shadow_ the very moment he decided to follow his brother. It's a thought that fills him with anger; shame, almost, as if he let himself be tricked, fooled by the cheapest of all distasteful jokes.  
  
But Saga, who for once seems unable to read his gaze and thoughts, keeps on holding out his hand for him when they train together and he's thrown to the ground. Kanon, who doesn't always choose to grab it, expects that gesture as if it were the wordless confirmation of a bond that hasn't been broken yet, and keeps on offering his own when it's Saga on the ground with dust in his hair and his eyes.  
  
At night, Saga presses his body against his: legs entwined, hands locked together and the tips of their noses that grow slightly wet from their breath. When they talk, sometimes, their lips brush against each other as they jump from a word to the other.  
  
Kanon thinks that he doesn't care for this world frozen in time that swallowed them; to him the goddess is as distant as the god from his mother's tirades and the sermons at church, and that she does not guarantee any sort of justice. But Saga's warmth descends like molasses upon his thoughts and snuffs them out as if they were impossibly small stars. Saga could devour the whole world, if he wanted—it's a wonderful realization.  
  
“Soon, brother,” Kanon mutters thinking of the Cloth and the future he read in their instructor's eyes.  
  
Saga sighs and begs Athena to grant him sleep at once: he's not running away; he's merely seeking peace, but somehow the sound of the waves fills his head, mixes with the buzz of his own blood and Kanon's, and it won't let him rest. Saga is already aware of his own destiny and he is so sure of it that, at times, everything else eludes him. I shall do that which is right, he promises and commands himself. But let me sleep for now, and he doesn't know if he's talking to Kanon or Athena or the world or some other part of his self.  
  
On a day that is not too far in the future, Kanon, who holds the sea in his eyes and his heart, will realize that Saga has, at last, truly forgotten himself and his destiny; that the dream became a mirage of ambitions. But on that day, for Saga and Kanon himself, it will be already too late.  
  


* * *

  
  
Kanon is almost twelve when he decides to take a stroll along the Sanctuary's walkways in broad daylight. It's an impulsive, mindless choice which could even make Saga angry—but perhaps this is precisely what Kanon wants: violent emotion on the face of a god, to discover again the humanity in that statue he doesn't know.  
  
Remember that you are my brother too, noble Saga of Gemini. And what does the Sanctuary know, what does the Pope know; the Sanctuary may own your flesh, your cosmo, but I have been with you since the beginning: before them, before our mother, before the world. I used to be you, before I became Kanon, before you became Saga. And what does the Sanctuary know, what does the Pope know, of this.  
  
What does Athena know.  
  
He doesn't pick the main roads, yet he doesn't attempt to hide either, a shadow among shadows, as he did almost all his life. Simply enough, he follows the quietest paths, those that are also the steepest and surrounded by groves that, in some places, converge into the maquis.  
  
After a while, trees and bushes thin away, opening like a curtain on a rocky slope, which is not very tall. Below, at its base, Kanon spots a cluster of reeves. In front of him is the Aegean, endless and incredibly blue, but his eyes stay glued to the rocks, made viscid by the waves.  
  
“Saga!”  
  
There is someone – a boy, with a red ribbon around his forehead, between his hair and into the wind – running in his direction. Kanon's eyes grow wide, his mouth dries up, as the panic induced by the surprise crushes his desire for rebellion.  
  
“I didn't think you'd be already here!” Sagittarius Aiolos laughs once he's close enough to grasp Kanon's wrists.  
  
The hold is not delicate, nor exactly gentle, but there's something unusual to it, something Kanon doesn't know, has never known in another person's touch. It's something secret, he realizes, a secret Saga kept from him.  
  
The scent of the maritime pines gets nauseating, it dazes him.  
  
Kanon wants to yell because he's angry, because he's tired, because he's confused and has no idea what his place in this secret world that stole everything from him is; instead he pushes Aiolos and, running away, he thinks, I hope you fall on those reeves.  
  
He recalls the fig, turned to pulp on the floor years ago, but this time it's not his father he sees in it: Kanon is not sure if it's Saga or himself.  
  
 _What does Athena know._


	4. The days when you thought our goodbye was a lie (Aiolos)

At the age of four, the only kind of love that Aiolos knows is the boundless and transcendental love of the Goddess.

It's a cosmos that reaches the ends of the universe, illuminating every shadow and filling every heart with warmth, they told him, and Aiolos, who is young and in the whole world knows Athens, the Sanctuary and his master alone, listens to that small star within himself, to the way it resonates with his thoughts and the nature around him. He pictures that light and those vibrations – gentle, like waves lapping – endlessly multiplying to cradle humanity and he tells himself, what a wonderful thing this is going to be.

His smile is radiant as he awaits Athena and learns to split mountains with his fists. Sometimes, a nail falls off, a finger breaks, the skin turns: yellow, green, blue. Sometimes, but only at the beginning, holding the tears back is impossible, still he never screams, never complains. Aiolos gets back on his feet and lets the apothecaries sew the edges of his flesh together the same way one mends old clothing, and in the meanwhile he listens as the small star within himself becomes bigger, warmer—as it grows with him.

His master is strict in his teachings, even so, he loves to smile. When he speaks of Aiolos' cosmos, his smile grows wider and he says then: it's like the sun, it's a miracle— _no_ , soon _you_ will be able to bring about miracles in the name of Athena, if you keep this up, young Aiolos: with a strong arm and an honest heart.

With a strong arm and an honest heart, Aiolos etches those words into his mind and nods his head. His eyes glow but there is no place for pride in his gaze. There is no hunger for praise nor thirst for glory; he has no wishes but that of becoming a Saint worthy of the title. Follow his example, bark the other instructors, pointing their fingers at him, and many children, future Saints and future, nameless soldiers alike, do just that.

At the age of four, Aiolos has not forgotten what a mother is, that kind and soft creature he left for the Sanctuary. A mother resembles the Goddess a bit. In his own way, Aiolos loves her still, even when he turns five, six, seven, eight years old and more, but inevitably, his is a faded love, that mostly tastes of affectionate nostalgia.

* * *

 

The first time Aiolos' spirit is perturbed by something it's August, August 15th, while Greece prays and celebrates the Dormitio Virginis.

It's a little past dawn and he has watched the sun risefrom the Athenian sea and ascend into the sky, perched on the crumbling seats of the old arena. He should be jogging right now, he ought to look for a sparring partner, perhaps swim all the way to the huge reef that towers over the horizon, but there is a weird stillness in the air, today, that weighs down his muscles and his thoughts, almost as if he hasn't slept for days. His master didn't come to wake him either, this morning; it's like he's been swallowed by something, somewhere. A light breeze starts to blow, swaying bushes, nettles and dandelions that grow in the cracks of the ancient rocks: they brush against Aiolos' calves, tickling and stinging. It itches, he thinks, but remains still.  
  
After a few minutes, however, Aiolos starts, like a lizard caught sunbathing by a child that wants to catch it. He starts, finally, and jumps to his feet when the Pope's imposing shadow hovers over him like a cloud.

“Sir…!” Aiolos gets goosebumps from the sudden wave of coolness, from his senses reigniting: the world has returned to its usual liveliness and it's intense enough to startle him.  
  
Behind the shining mask, Shion watches him with tenderness. “What are you doing here, young warrior?”  
  
And Aiolos remembers the training he skipped and the recollection turns his cheeks red. “I... I,” he stutters.  
  
He ought to apologize, find the proper words to express shame and regret, to explain what happened, that strange feeling, but, Aiolos finds, it is not possible: he has already forgotten what that state of languor felt like; it's once again unknown to him, as it's always been his short, yet whole, life. He ought to say something, at least, say _anything at all_ , but the Pope's hand, ancient and cool on his naked shoulder, is like a spell that coaxes him into silence.  
  
“Worry not,” the timeless voice commands. “It was I who asked you not be bothered for today: there is something that I wish to show you.”  
  
Aiolos blinks; he doesn't dare speak, ask for an explanation, but Shion can read the questions in his eyes.  
  
“Oh, perhaps I should have said: someone. There is someone that you should meet,” he says as they begin their descent. “It is of the utmost importance. I wonder if you sensed anything…?”  
  
Aiolos lowers his head, aware of his second failure that day. He's about to mouth a _no_ , because he wishes to admit to his shortcoming, because an honest heart is part of his strength. He's about to mouth a _no_ , when something that resembles a small explosion, two stars meeting in the middle of the sky, shakes up his chest.  
  
There is someone a few meters away from them. Aiolos studies their back, their hair, and decides that they look immensely frail. That this is someone he has never seen.  
  
Within his heart, that absolute and unnatural stillness is returning.  
  
It is at this moment, that Shion catches the first glimpse of what shall become a friendship like the one Aristotle wrote about; like the one he had himself shared during a youth that already feels like a lifetime ago: a soul in two bodies, yes. Shion shall be, moreover, the only one to have seen and to remember Aiolos' eyes at that time: the dilated pupils and the wonder, the curiosity, the almost-greed articulated into an _I want to know him_ that Aiolos isn't even aware he thought up. Shion will remember all of this, until the end, and at the very end, this shall be one of the last fragments flashing before his eyes, the regret of a truth that he should have, perhaps, unveiled to take away the cup of an all too bitter destiny.  
  
“Saga,” he calls, simply.  
  
For a moment, Saga's hair shines, darting into a semicircle as his body turns towards the other two.  
  
“Sir,” he murmurs, caught in between revering and surprised. Aiolos wonders what he could have possibly been observing, among trees and rocks, to have captured his attention so.  
  
“Aiolos,” softly, Shion calls his name. “This is Saga. He hails from one of the villages by the coast. Starting today, he shall be entrusted to a personal instructor like you and become your comrade. Live as brothers, and be strong, for your fates have been foreordained and your burdens are immeasurable. Young Saga is protected by the stars of Gemini.”  
  
In an outburst of naivete that he will never experience again, the only response Aiolos can come up with is:  
  
“But he is _so small_.”  
  
“Even so,” the Pope retorts with a smile that is almost a laugh and colors his voice, “it seems, to me, that your senses have already picked up on his cosmos and that you let yourself be ensnared by it, well before we reached this place.”  
  
Later on, Aiolos will learn that Saga is actually older than him, and had already turned five almost two months prior to their meeting; that, on his face, serious and strict expressions alternate with a shy smile which is described by the people in Rodorio as that of an angel or a merciful god. He will learn that, when he laughs or yawns, Saga has the habit of covering his mouth with a hand, and that with few words he's able to infuse people with courage and earn their trust.  
  
Saga shall become the rival and the inspiration and Aiolos will allow himself to be cradled by his kind cosmos in the years to come, believing it would last forever.  
  
In the years to come, on certain sunny afternoons where everything slows down, Aiolos will remind Saga of the expression he wore on that day, when they were only four and five respectively.  
  
“You had this indignant air about you,” he'll say, a rich laugh ready to bloom across his lips. “And you were trying so hard to hide it. I think, you wanted to appear absolutely calm before the Pope, but the truth was, you looked like a squirrel with its cheeks stuffed with nuts!”  
  
Then Saga will, without meaning to, replicate that very expression, and attempt to hide his face in a papyrus he had been deciphering, or between his hands, roughened up by training, until the moment when, tired of Aiolos' laughter, he will throw him to the ground or against a pillar under his own weight.  
  
“You said I was very small, and yet I am so much taller than you, nowadays,” Saga will say with a smile that is sharp like a blade, and that only Aiolos has seen, and only a handful of times.  
  
They'll look each other in the eye for a while that will feel almost endless, in silence, as if waiting for _something_ to happen or for the other to do _something_ and for everything to change: often, when they are alone, their adolescence is reduced to the wait for a nameless miracle.  
  
Often, Saga struggles, looking for the right word, for the key to this revolution. But even at thirteen, even at fourteen, it's as if Aiolos were blind and deaf, for he's still sure that there is no other kind of love he knows aside from the one for the Goddess or Aiolia.  
  
And so he will break the silence, laugh at Saga, himself and that strange tension; he will flip their bodies around and he will assert without too much conviction: “Even so, the strongest one is still me,” and Saga will reply to that attack to his pride with another attack, starting a chain that will only break once they're out of breath and then when Aiolos' time will stop forever.


End file.
